Expert Group Meetings

Forced Private Tutoring in Egypt: Quality Education in a Deadlock between Low Income, Status and Motivation

Date : 9/28/2014

Speakers : Group of Experts

This expert group meeting discussed the research proposal entitled: "Forced Private Tutoring in Egypt: Quality Education in a Deadlock between Low Income, Status and Motivation," by Sebastian Ille. Specifically, the meeting discussed the following education policy questions:

What are the fundamental drivers of private tutoring?

What are the best applicable mechanisms to minimize forced private tutoring?

What are the possibilities and implications of engaging the private sector in a PPP to provide schooling services with decent quality and reasonable tuition fees that replace private tutoring?

Background:
Despite the general consensus on the poor quality of education in Egypt, there is no public discourse on the roots of the problem. In addition, the poor quality of most of the state education system, and the widespread reliance on private tutoring to supplement it, also contribute to Egypt’s high level of economic inequality, raising concerns about social justice.

In order to trigger and shape the public debate on basic education and to manifest society’s demand for its reform, ECES is implementing a project that examines the structural problems in Egypt's basic education system and provide high quality insight into the economic costs of its current state. The research results will be disseminated through high level Roundtables and through both traditional and new social media outreach.

One major challenge in the education system is private tutoring. This phenomenon usually implies that a teacher deliberately reduces his teaching quality (i.e. effort in class) to force students to participate in his private classes. Private tutoring, on the other hand, is founded out of the student’s (or his parents’) motivation to improve his knowledge about the subject (mostly for competitive reasons). This has put additional financial strain on parents who send their children to a public school, and has put at a disadvantage the already unprivileged poor. It has further severely deteriorated public education because of a refusal of teachers to actively teach in school, creating a system of corruption amongst public schools in which it is not the student with the best abilities, who receives best grades, but the student, whose parents are willing to pay extra-money to their child’s teachers.

Participants:

Mr. Bruce Currie Alder, Regional Director, The International Development Research Centre